On a Thursday afternoon in early December, Susan Sarandon was on the set of Ryan Murphy’s much-anticipated drama Feud, examining a prop Oscar.

The actress was in full Bette Davis regalia, looking resplendent in a navy chiffon gown with square neckline—a sumptuous recreation of the actual design Davis wore to the 1963 Academy Awards.

Sarandon was about to film a heartbreaking scene set on that very Academy Awards night 54 years ago, when Davis was nominated for her performance in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? She and her Hollywood rivalJoan Crawford—played in the series by Jessica Lange—agreed to star in the 1962 horror film as a last-ditch effort to revive their waning careers. Crawford was not nominated for an Oscar, but, cunning star that she was, devised a plan to steal the spotlight from Davis anyway by volunteering to accept the best-actress statuette should Anne Bancroft win for The Miracle Worker.

Anne Bancroft, left, receiving her Oscar for best actress from Joan Crawford, right, who accepted the award on her behalf and met with Bancroft during curtain calls of Mother Courage and Her Children on Broadway on May 7, 1963.

From the New York Post Archives/Getty Images.

In the end, Crawford, who was not even nominated, walked away with the Oscar.

But that scene hadn’t unfolded yet, at least in Ryan Murphy’s retelling. And Sarandon’s Davis was lingering in her living room for a pre-Oscar-reckoning moment with her friend Olivia de Havilland—played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. At 54, Davis had been elbowed out of Hollywood’s spotlight by a new generation of actresses and was painfully aware that the evening was her last chance to claim a golden “baby brother” for the Oscars she won for Jezebel and Dangerous.

The scene was full of meta subtext. Two Oscar-winning actresses over a certain age were playing two Oscar-winning actresses over a certain age, battling ageism, sexism, and other unfair industry standards. Murphy’s eight-episode dive into Davis and Crawford’s prickly relationship provides plenty of drama, delicious period costume, and hilarious moments tailor-made for GIF-dom. But Murphy also examines the deep and complex feelings beneath this famous Hollywood feud, and how studio titan Jack Warner (Stanley Tucci) manufactured it—pitting his ambitious female stars against each other to feed gossip columns with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? publicity.

As the crew made some last-minute changes, Sarandon picked up the prop Oscar to examine it. “The real ones are heavier,” noted Sarandon, who has her own for Dead Man Walking.

A crew member nearby explained that it would have cost production $1,400 for a statue that more closely resembled the real thing.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sarandon replied incredulously.

A few feet away, Sarandon’s co-star Zeta-Jones chimed in to kid the actress—and, more importantly, remind Sarandon of the day’s special visitors: “Susan, be nice. There are press on set.”

Without missing a beat, Sarandon volleyed back a wisecrack that would have made Davis proud: “Well, I am in character,” said Sarandon. “I never swear unless as Bette.”

From left to right: Bette Davis, Jack Warner, and Crawford, c.1962.

From the Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Rather than direct from video village—watching his stars remotely from a flatscreen—Murphy left his director’s chair and joined them in the dimly lit living-room set.

“You’re like an old-fashioned director!” cried Sarandon. Murphy called action, and the actress immediately pivoted into character and Davis’s famously clipped delivery.

In the scene, de Havilland wonders what happened to the gold plating on Davis’s Oscar. Had it fallen off?

“More like rubbed off,” Sarandon’s Davis replies, launching into a monologue about how the Oscar is her most important companion. It is patient, silent, and, if she holds it tightly enough, it reminds her of the night she won “him,” when all of Hollywood stood on its feet to shower her in applause and unadulterated affection. The speech is a searing insight into Davis, and the professional locomotive inside her that always won out—over her broken marriages and her relationships with her children.

Several hours later, after breaking for lunch, Murphy revealed that the tarnished-Oscar story stems from a real-life conversation Murphy had with Davis at her Los Angeles home when he was a young journalist.

“The 20-minute interview turned into four hours of me just sitting with her, talking and chain smoking with her,” said Murphy of their 1989 meeting, which took place just weeks before Davis died of breast cancer. “I remember she had a huge painting that a fan had done of her in Jezebel. I noticed her Oscar and asked her if the gold plating fell off. She said, ‘This is why.’” Murphy still has the audio tapes from the interview, and listened to them again while prepping the show.

Although Davis and Crawford are both remembered for their over-the-top bravado, Murphy said that Davis, in private, was much different.

Crawford, left, and Davis, right, in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1962.

From Michael Ochs Archives/Moviepix/Getty Images.

“She was very real, and what I took from that meeting was that all of the stuff that we’ve come to associate with Bette Davis—the exaggerations, the big voice, and the elaborate gestures—when she was in private, that was all gone. . . . She told me that she was obsessed with winning and being famous and being ambitious and believed, ‘The only way to get ahead in this business is if they can impersonate you, because that means you’re singular and that’s what I try to do.’ I’ve always known the real Bette Davis to be not the vampy, campy person, but a real woman who, in that four hours with me, talked about heartache and sadness and regret.”

Sarandon is playing Davis in many public, over-the-top scenarios, though—including scenes from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which she and Lange painstakingly re-created by studying the actresses’ cadences, gestures, and blocking to get them exactly right. Understandably, Sarandon said she initially struggled with the task.

“I was terrified at first,” Sarandon explained. “For me, it took about six weeks of filming before the ratio of fun to fear evened out. I was overwhelmed completely because her speech patterns—everything—are so different than mine. Betty and Joan were such caricatures, really—so much larger than life and so mannered, and said the most outrageous things. All of that attitude, those lines, and the smoking. . . . As actors, you’re trying to make it real and trying to base it on something, and you just feel like you’re doing one meme after another.”

Joan Crawford in her New York City apartment enjoying a cigarette.

From Bettmann/Getty Images.

Understanding Joan

Jessica Lange has long been a Ryan Murphy muse, earning twin Emmys for the roles Murphy custom-made for her on his first FX anthology series, American Horror Story. Even though Lange was attached to Murphy’s Crawford/Davis project for years—when it was initially conceived as a film—the actress admitted that she knew little about the Mildred Pierce star.

“I knew nothing about Joan Crawford,” Lange told us on set, in full Crawford makeup, sitting atop a plastic-covered sofa of Joan’s. “When I started reading all of the biographies, I was shocked by the Dickensian childhood she had.”

“She was born dirt poor, in San Antonio, Texas, to a mother who never wanted her, didn’t like her, was physically abusive to her,” explained Lange. “Her father left before she was born. She was mistreated her whole childhood, was involved in a sexual relationship with her stepfather from the time she was 11, and was farmed out to schools supposedly to get an education but really as a little work horse. She said herself that she never got anything beyond a fifth-grade education.”

“When she arrived in Hollywood”—after a short-lived dancing career in Chicago led to a screen test for an MGM executive—“she said that MGM was the only family she ever knew. They taught her how to speak in that very artificial mid-Atlantic accent that has nothing to do with her upbringing. She was determined to be a lady. When she married Douglas Fairbanks Jr., she used to study [his stepmother, screen star] Mary Pickford and how every fork was placed . . . she worked hard. She was ambitious. She wanted this. She worked at it, and when she achieved stardom, she protected that entity, that product—Joan Crawford—like a she-wolf.”

“For Joan, [making it in Hollywood] really was survival for her,” said Lange. “Coming up out of that terrible poverty and that kind of childhood, with no education, she learned to use sexuality as either a solace or a reward or a tool. She supposedly had a voracious kind of approach to sex. I read that there was nothing demure or kittenish about her sexuality. It was absolutely direct, just like everything else about her. It was what she wanted and what she knew she could use to get where she wanted. There was something very direct, almost masculine in her approach to sex as a tool.”

Murphy did not understand Crawford as much as he did Davis—of whom he had been a lifelong fan—when he began crafting the project.

“The more we write the show, the more I understand and completely get Joan Crawford,” explained Murphy. “She was a sexual-abuse survivor who was sent away by her mother as punishment. She scrubbed floors and toilets to put herself through school. That background and childhood formed this creature, who had a pure desire to be loved. . . . I believe most people don’t go into show business unless they’ve been majorly unloved as a child.”

“I think there was always that fear of falling back into poverty,” added Lange. “So she created this tremendous artifice.”

Indeed, Crawford is shown in the series insulating herself (and her beloved maid, Mamasita, played by Jackie Hoffman) in her pristine Beverly Hills mansion, where she focused on her career and its upkeep with military precision—rubbing her skin with lemons daily; memorizing the names of crew members to ensure better lighting; poring over female-centric books for juicy roles to adapt for herself on-screen; and getting on her hands and knees to scrub the floors herself when necessary. Although she had millions of adoring fans—to whom she personally (and promptly) responded with hand-written letters—Crawford suffered from loneliness. And like many men and women of that era, she medicated with alcohol.

“Joan gave a wonderful quote once,” explained Lange, “where she said, ‘Alcoholism is an occupational hazard of being an actor, of being a widow, and of being alone. And I’m all three.’”

Sarandon as Davis in Feud.

Courtesy of FX.

Becoming Bette

Feud marks Sarandon’s first foray into the Ryan Murphy TV universe, but not the first time that the actress has been asked to embody Bette Davis. On set, Sarandon told us she had been approached to play the screen legend for decades—on stage and screen—because of the striking resemblance she bears.

Ultimately, Sarandon decided to take on the challenge of playing Davis for Murphy for several reasons, including the fact that he committed to filling half of Feud’s director positions with women, people of color, and members of the L.G.B.T. community as part of his recently launched Half foundation. (Murphy says that he also created nearly 15 roles for women over 40 on the new anthology series; provided women with salary parity; and gave both Sarandon and Lange partial ownership of the show—all feats that would have made Davis and Crawford, renegade feminists before it was cool to be a renegade feminist, incredibly proud.)

“The fact that this project was very well intentioned was what sold me,” said Sarandon. Another aspect of Feud that appealed to Sarandon: that Murphy extended Feud’s storytelling perspective to incorporate the plights of several women aside from Davis and Crawford, like Pauline Jameson (Alison Wright), an aspiring female director trying to convince anyone in Hollywood to give her a shot behind the camera.

“What he did so brilliantly was put [Davis and Crawford’s relationship] in the context of what was happening to women of that day,” explained Sarandon. “These two women had very different approaches to their careers and to the machine [of Hollywood], but paid the same price because they were women. It asks the question, ‘How much have things really changed?’ ”

Speaking separately, Lange agreed.

“What I think we are doing is speaking about women in Hollywood and how women are disposable. . . . How women have a sell-by date that men don’t. There’s no equity as far as longevity of career or amount of money that can be made. . . . It’s interesting because those women were a good 10 years younger than Susan and I are now while making What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. I think what we’re really talking about is how nothing has changed . . . not in this industry, and certainly not on a larger scale, in this country.”

But Sarandon does see a glimmer of hope—at least in terms of women’s relationships with other females in the industry.

“In Bette’s time, the [Hollywood power brokers] really knew how to pit these women against each other, so that they had more control over them. They couldn’t afford for women like Bette and Joan to join forces. In that time, women always aligned themselves with the power, which meant they aligned themselves with men. They saw other women as threats.”

When Sarandon started out in film some four decades ago, she said that female friendships in Hollywood could be just as frosty—alluding to one particularly contentious relationship she had with an actress a few years older than her. But over the years, Sarandon has been satisfied to see female relationships in Hollywood strengthen—and women band together to fight for causes such as equal pay.

“That at least, thankfully, has really changed.”

Lange as Crawford in Feud.

Courtesy of FX.

Of Human Bondage

The presidential election this past November served as a wake-up call to much of America, including Murphy, who had been anticipating that Hillary Clinton would be president by the time of Feud’s March 5 premiere—and that the show’s sexist dynamics would feel dated and historical. Not, well, more relevant than ever.

“When we were writing the scripts, we felt like Hillary was going to win,” Murphy explained. “It was like, ‘Isn’t this amazing? Look how far we’ve come. We have a woman running the country. Maybe we don’t have to worry about a glass ceiling anymore. Maybe we’re not going to have to worry about ageism and white men in power controlling everything and unfair wages for women.

“Since the election, though, the show feels much more sobering and heartbreaking and actually necessary,” continued Murphy. “It really shines a spotlight on all these issues that we thought were going away, but are actually are not.”

Asked how he hopes Feud will affect audiences, Murphy said, “I hope this show can be a jumping-off point for people to see what these two legendary women had to go through to survive in a way that their male counterparts—like Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clark Gable—never had to. I hoped that everything shown in these scenes set in 1962 would feel like a period piece, and sadly, now, these scenes do not.”

As for what Murphy thinks Davis and Crawford would think of the project, Murphy said, “I think Bette would actually enjoy it and approve of it in some weird way. In my interview she talked about being the first woman to sue Jack Warner to get out of her contract. Because of her, Olivia de Havilland did sue a couple years later and actually pulled down the contract system. Bette was very much a feisty Yankee feminist, although I don’t think she would use the word feminist.”

Davis and Crawford reading the script for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? on July 16, 1962.

From Bettmann/Getty Images.

“I think she would like Feud because we tackle those issues. We talk about how much she cared about her work, and because of that, everything else failed: her marriages, her relationships with her children. That wouldn’t have happened to a man.” [Davis’s daughter B.D. Hyman wrote a tell-all book about her relationship with her mother, My Mother’s Keeper, just as Crawford’s daughter Christine infamously did with the takedown Mommie Dearest.]

“I wish I had met Joan,” said Murphy. “I think she would approve of Feud because, unlike with Mommy Dearest, which was an exploitation novel, we try to explain the softer side of Joan Crawford. We examine her pain, her sexual abuse. She was an alcoholic, I think, to deaden the pain of that stuff. She always felt very insecure and unloved by everybody.”

“After seeing how strongly people reacted to the People v. O.J. Simpson episode ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,’ I knew I wanted to revisit the issues of how hard it is for women to be working mothers and to be single mothers and to have equal pay. These two women, Joan and Bette, should have been treated better—especially at the end of their lives. That they were not was appalling.”

“In the interview that I had with her, Bette Davis actually expressed some regret about how she and Joan ended up, which was fascinating to me,” continued Murphy. “I have always had a wistful dream that Bette and Joan could have watched this together. I think that my favorite line from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is at the end of the film, when Jane tells Blanche, just as she is dying, ‘You mean all this time we could have been friends?’ To me, that’s what the whole show is about.”

Kathy Bates as Joan Blondell

Alfred Molina as Robert Aldrich

The British star will take on the role of Aldrich, who directed and produced Baby Jane.

Photo: Left, from Universal; Right, by Amanda Edwards/WireImage, both from Getty Images.

Dominic Burgess as Victor Buono

The Brit, who has appeared on Doctor Who and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, will bring to life actor Victor Buono, another Academy Award nominee for Baby Jane.

Photo: Left, from 20th Century Fox; Right, from FX Networks, both from Everett Collection.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Olivia de Havilland

The Oscar winner comes to the small screen as de Havilland, who co-starred with Davis in Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte after Crawford dropped out of the movie—and if Murphy has his way, she might just take center stage in Feud’s second outing.

Kathy Bates as Joan Blondell

Alfred Molina as Robert Aldrich

The British star will take on the role of Aldrich, who directed and produced Baby Jane.

Left, from Universal; Right, by Amanda Edwards/WireImage, both from Getty Images.

Stanley Tucci as Jack L. Warner

The man whose Midas touch has enhanced everything from The Devil Wears Prada to The Hunger Games will chew the scenery as flamboyant Jack L. Warner, longtime president of Warner Bros.

Left, from Moviestore; Right, by Ken McKay/ITV, both from Rex/Shutterstock.

Judy Davis as Hedda Hopper

Davis once played Judy Garland in an Emmy-winning TV mini-series; now she'll take on gossip magnate Hedda Hopper.

Left, from Everett Collection; Right, by Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images.

Dominic Burgess as Victor Buono

The Brit, who has appeared on Doctor Who and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, will bring to life actor Victor Buono, another Academy Award nominee for Baby Jane.

Left, from 20th Century Fox; Right, from FX Networks, both from Everett Collection.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Olivia de Havilland

The Oscar winner comes to the small screen as de Havilland, who co-starred with Davis in Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte after Crawford dropped out of the movie—and if Murphy has his way, she might just take center stage in Feud’s second outing.